Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-06-25

Referring to the fact that a wealthy
lady of Chicago has offered large pre-
MUM for a novel that will correctly de-
1 scribe the Chicago girl who has been grossly
misrepresented and slandered by the mod
ern novelist, the San Francisco Call saws
Chicago is not the only city which has SUI.
I Tered at the hands or novel writers. We here
| are at times appalled, by descriptions in English
| novels of California girls of SO extraordinary
! type that we wonder where on earth the author
found his model On reflection we discover
| that he evolved his California girl out of his
inner consciousness. He was never here. He
| never knew a California girl or California
family. He found by the map that San Fran
cisco is on the Pacific. and he judiciously con-
Guided that the blending of Briton culture with
Pacific coast barbarism must give birth to
riouS type, in which the Arcadian simplicity of
nature was toned but not effaced by the polish
of civilization.
The California girl has not so much to
complain of as the California man, He
never has been fairly treated in fiction,
and the worst of it is that the pictures
drawn in which he is the central figure,
and that are absolutely false and untrue
have been the work, not of strangers but
of our own household. Bret Harte, for
instance, has done more to demoralize and
prejudice public sentiment concerning the
man of California than any other inAu-
euce. His characters of life in the mines
have educated people abroad to believe
that California is still border land, and
that our men are half ignoramuses and
half gamblers and drunkards. 1t is
a well-known fact that vast numbers of
people at distance take Harte's wild
fancy and extravagant distortion to be
| real, and come to California expecting
to find just such characters as ne depicts
They even deem it essential to arm them
selves, and to 90 into the mountain region
especially prepared to resist expected in
suit and assault. 1t is difficult to realize
that this is so, but we have such assurance
of the fact that it cannot be doubted. The
truth is, there was not in the early mining
era of California, nor since, any such
gushing, slangy, and ignorant creatures as
Harte has induced the world to believe.
He has done the State incalculable injury
by the false estimate he has led men TO
make of our civilization. The miner,
loafer, gambler, and ranchero of Harte's
novels are unreal beings-creatures of his
fancy, and wholly unlike the pioneer Cali
fornian. As matter of fact, these pioneer
men were picked from the best of the
East; courageous, daring, honorable men;
men Of force of character fit to be con-
querors OF a new world by the arts of
peace, and the very flower of the man.
hood and civilization of the East. The
seurvy biackguards, ncouth, slangv and
reckless creatures Of Harte's imaginings
were not Of the army of pioneers who
first entered California, and upon whose
heels came civilization the equal of that
of to-day, if it was not so gifted with
wealth, or attached to the arts Of COM
merce as that of the present. Naturally,
in the unsettled state, there was less Of re-
iinement. and men were somewhat less OBJ
servant of conventional social restraints;
but that Harte's men of California are
types of classes of any considerable num-
Der is wholly untrue